'The Walking Dead' says goodbye to Rick on an emotional cliffhanger and fans are a bit divided

Were you happy with what happened to Rick on Sunday's episode?
Jackson Lee Davis/AMC

Warning: There are major spoilers ahead for Sunday's episode of "The Walking Dead," "What Comes After."

Andrew Lincoln's final episode of "The Walking Dead" aired Sunday on AMC and we finally know what became of Rick after he fell on a piece of rebar. It's a bit of a doozy.

Don't continue reading if you haven't seen Sunday's episode and don't want to know what happens.

I'm not sure how this man got back up onto his steed to ride it, but I respect it. Jackson Lee Davis/AMC

Rick searched the entirety of Sunday's episode for a way to get rid of the giant zombie herd threat to the communities. Somehow Rick miraculously didn't bleed out over the course of Sunday's episode.

He not only managed to pull himself up from a piece of rebar (everyone wears two belts in the zombie apocalypse, right?), but was able to ride a horse, hack away at the undead, and survive falling off a bridge all with two giant open wounds.

Near the end of the episode, Rick sacrificed himself and the bridge he worked hard to build to save the Hilltop community from the undead. He blew up some TNT, causing the bridge to explode and for him to go along with the undead into the moving river.

Rick tells everyone to stay back as he fires a bullet at some TNT and falls into the river never to be seen again. Gene Page/AMC

Luckily for him, he wound up washing ashore near Anne as she was about to flee Rick's community circus for (hopefully) greener pastures.

When she found Rick, she immediately decided to save him. Anne convinced the mystery helicopter to whisk Rick away along with her to an undisclosed location, and just like that Rick's fate was left open-ended.

In the end, Anne came through. Jackson Lee Davis/AMC

Instead of ending there, the show flashed ahead several years later without Rick to show his daughter, Judith, much older.

Were you surprised to see the Judith reveal? AMC

Reactions to the show's decision to not kill off Rick were understandably mixed, especially since AMC has heavily marketed these past few episodes as "Rick Grimes' final episodes." Is it really a true final episode if there's a possibility for the character to return?

Most were happy and relieved that the show's main character wasn't killed off because there's a possibility we'll see him again at some point.

"I tried to leave the show last season," Lincoln told Yvette Nicole Brown on series' aftershow "Talking Dead." "There was a plan. The tree that I was bleeding out under, there was an 'A,' 'B,' or 'C.' There was a version where I died, there was a version presumably where a helicopter may have arrived and whisked me away, then."

While Rick may be gone on "The Walking Dead" for now, he's not gone forever. Chief content officer Scott M. Gimple announced on aftershow "Talking Dead" AMC will continue to follow Rick's journey in a series of at least three original movies.